Category: Physics-Astronomy

After 85 years of hard work and searching, scientists have confirmed the presence of a massless particle called the Weyl fermion for the first time ever. With the exceptional ability to act as both matter and anti-matter inside a crystal, this odd particle can produce electrons that have no mass. The discovery is a big step, not just because we lastly have proof that these mysterious particles exist, but because it paves the way for far more effective electronics, and new types of quantum computing. Lead investigator and physicist M. Zahid Hasan from Princeton University in the US told AnthonyCuthbertson of IBTimes “Weyl fermions could be used to solve the traffic jams that you get with electrons in electronics – they can move in a much more efficient, ordered way than electrons.They could lead to a new type of electronics we call ‘Weyltronics’.”

“A metaphorical chip holding all the programming for our universe stores information like a quantum computer.” This is the radical insight to the foundation of our Universe developed by Mark Van Raamsdonk, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of British Columbia, that says that the world we see around us is a projection from a set of rules written in simpler, lower-dimensional physics-just as the 2D code in a computer’s memory chip creates an entire virtual 3D world. “What Mark has done is put his finger on a key ingredient of how space-time is emerging: entanglement,” says Gary Horowitz, who studies quantum gravity at the University of California Santa Barbara. Horowitz says this idea has changed how people think about quantum gravity, though it hasn’t yet been universally accepted. “You don’t come across this idea by following other ideas. It requires a strange insight,” Horowitz adds. “He is one of the stars of the younger generation.”
“We’re trying to construct a dictionary,” says Van Raamsdonk, that allows physicists to translate descriptions of our complex universe into simpler terms. If they succeed, they will have found the biggest jigsaw piece in the puzzle of a Grand Unified Theory-something that can describe all of the forces of our universe, at all scales from the atomic to the galactic. That puzzle piece is, specifically, something that can describe gravity within the framework of quantum mechanics, which governs physics on small scales. Such a unified theory is needed to explain the extreme scenarios of a black hole or the first moments of the universe.” The catacylst for Van Raamsdonk’s theory was a 1998 paper by Juan Maldacena a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton’s Institite for Advanced studies that proposed that to understand quantum gravity through string theory, you can look instead to the much more ordinary, well-described system of quantum mechanics called quantum field theory that concluded that it seems that all the information about our complex multi-dimensional world can be described using a simpler, lower-dimensional language-just as a 3D image is projected from the 2D screen of a hologram, or a 3D computer gaming world created from a 2D memory chip. “After that, people wrote thousands of papers just testing whether that could be true,” says Van Raamsdonk. “No one has actually proven it, but we’re as certain about it as about anything in physics,” he added.

The most amazing thing about math is that, throughout its history, we have learned concepts and theories that were completely useless at the time (or at least, appeared so), but later proved priceless. Many of these theories eventually led to significant revolutions in our understanding of the universe, and many others placed the groundwork for mathematical theories that went on to give us a deeper an better understanding of the universe. For example in the field of quantum mechanics, which came about because of Einstein’s work in general and special relativity. In the end, you can say, math is the language of the universe. With it, we can comprehend the rudimentary construction of our home in the cosmos. Learn about the most important numbers (to us, anyways) in the video below.

A 60-year-old concept about the structure of the magnetic fields around Planet Earth has been confirmed openly for the first time ever in recent issued research paper. The main author of the paper is surprisingly an undergraduate student who devised a way to view the Earth’s magnetosphere in three dimensions. The sun releases a continuous stream of charged particles that’s supplemented by cosmic rays from causes such as supernovae. As these particles touch Earth, their route is altered by the Earth’s magnetic field, which bounces some and funnels others towards the poles, leading to awesome views such as aurora. This area, known as the magnetosphere, contains the ionosphere and plasmasphere as its inner layers. These differences aside, we don’t know all that much about the arrangement of these areas. A better understanding would be valuable because the ionosphere affects satellite navigation systems and the pictures received by radio telescopes. During her honors project at the University of Sydney, Cleo Loi recognized she could use the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope to analyze these areas in a way that had never been done before, leading to a paper in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

A compact fusion reactor presented by Skunk Works, the stealth experimental technology section of Lockheed Martin. It’s about the size of a jet engine and it can fuel airplanes, most likely spaceships, and cities. Skunk Works state that it will be operational in 10 years.

A compact fusion reactor presented by Skunk Works, the stealth experimental technology section of Lockheed Martin. It’s about the size of a jet engine and it can fuel airplanes, most likely spaceships, and cities. Skunk Works state that it will be operational in 10 years.

In late May, mathematician Eric Weinstein gave a talk at Oxford University about his ideas about “Geometric Unity,” a mathematical theory that purports to explain why the universe works the way it does. Weinstein He earned a 1992 Ph.D [in Mathematical Physics from Harvard University and has since held a Lady Davis Fellowship in the Racah Institute ofPhysics at Hebrew University, an NSF fellowship in the mathematics Department of MIT.

In late May, mathematician Eric Weinstein gave a talk at Oxford University about his ideas about “Geometric Unity,” a mathematical theory that purports to explain why the universe works the way it does. Weinstein He earned a 1992 Ph.D [in Mathematical Physics from Harvard University and has since held a Lady Davis Fellowship in the Racah Institute ofPhysics at Hebrew University, an NSF fellowship in the mathematics Department of MIT.